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Our new leader is a very colorful character. It occurred to me that an interesting undertaking would be to make a list of all the words that best describe him. Everything in the list below can be supported by recorded speeches and published reliable sources. Here is my list:

The core feature of his character is his self-interest: winning, and receiving flattery and adoration. This need for adoration colors everything he does. Most of his speeches, and many conversations begin with his bragging about successes. Sources close to him say that he reads a lot about himself and very little about everything else. His warm relationship with Putin may be the result of flattery. Putin has a long history of manipulation. Some responsible parties speculate that the warm Russian relationship may result from black-mail.

A major discussion about our new leader is whether his false statements are contrived or simply mistakes. My guess is both. An example of contrived is when he characterized the Iran Nuclear Deal as worthless — obviously untrue. Using the same example, he said that we could have used the money given to Iran for infrastructure work in the USA. This was false, but maybe he did not know that the money given to Iran was confiscated Iranian money, and could not have been used by us. He also did not seem to know that six major countries were a part of this deal and we did not have exclusive control over it.

Our new President came into office after a life of extreme luxury, likely surrounded by subservient yes-men. His false statements, I suspect, were rarely challenged. That would explain much of what he said in his later political career.

A major flaw in his thinking is that the president makes simple solutions to simple problems. It appears that he had no idea how complicated presidential decisions really are. Many of our international relations and domestic policies are very fine tuned and are the result of considering dozens of pros and cons. And some decisions are so complicated and dangerous that they must be postponed indefinitely. It is easy to criticize our recent and long-standing policies, but when you ask the critics for better solutions, they usually stutter or pivot to other questions. For many years Republicans have criticized ObamaCare (ACA). But now that they are in full control, they cannot come up with a good replacement.

Many intelligent leaders (in both parties) warned against possible dangers of his presidency. To name a few of his actual disasters: undermining our judiciary and press, alienating many of our major allies, and creating more terrorists through his hostile foreign policies. He does not seem to understand that simplistic impulsive acts can have long-term negative effects. During his candidacy he committed to foolish and impossible promises, and now we must suffer with his irrational efforts to follow through on them.